literature

"I'm very interested in writer's block at the moment," says Ken Campbell. For a second, there flashes before me the image of a bald middle- aged man with bushy eyebrows and a loo-plunger stuck to his head, frowning at a blank page. "As usual I'm suffering from writer's flow," he adds. "I'm just interested in writer's block."

That a writer who can stare block in the face should be asked to co-run a course entitled "How to Become a Master Storyteller" with sitcom writer Jurgen Wolff this weekend is unsurprising. But isn't the presence of a discovered cockney genius going to intimidate would-be screenplay writers? Well, Ken has been, and still is, there: "I've written lots of screenplays, I get lots of dough for them but they don't get made. I did one for the BBC called Wogan's Potatoes. They were thrilled. They never did it. That's why I end up doing my one-man shows." While Wolff's method involves creative visualisation, Campbell teaches his own "enantiodromic" technique. Writers can end up sounding a bit like David Mamet, apparently. "Put simply, it's turning from one set of values to a totally different set. Every line should be a turning point."

"Merseyverse" at the BAC tonight puts Roger McGough next to some slightly younger scousers: Barbara Murray, Kevin McCann and Glyn Wright, winners of the first national poetry slam last year. All three appear regularly at Liverpool's happening Dead Good Poets Society. Affordable, and no doubt as they say, dead good.

`Becoming a Master Storyteller', tonight (7pm), Sat, Sun, The Robert Wilson Black Centre, Caxton Street, SW1, £175 (booking: 01732 810561).

See listings for `Merseyverse' details

- someone who can quantam leap from his dog to the Melanesian Duke of Edinburgh Cult for source material -